Bike lane foes need to slow down: Share the road, walkers and drivers

A woman rides her bike down a controversial bike lane along Prospect Park West. (Adams for News)

Why do normal, rational people turn into spittle-flecking, pitchfork-carrying mad villagers when confronted with bicyclists and bike lanes?

Today's rage - including a new lawsuit against Transportation Department Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan for a supposedly renegade bike lane along Prospect Park West in Brooklyn - feels unnaturally hostile in the face of a rather modest change to our streetscape, which has long been in need of a makeover.

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The New York Times, in a December editorial, wrote that "Too many cyclists must think that they don't have to follow traffic rules." Even The New Yorker is chiming in, recently defending anti-bikers in its "Rational Irrationality" blog. Our media behave as if bicyclists were part of a nefarious plot to take over the world, when all we want is our fair share of the pavement.

Meanwhile, it feels like my fellow New Yorkers want me around as much as they do rats and roaches. I've been yelled at for riding on the sidewalk, on the street, for being on the bicycle path in the park and for walking my bike on the sidewalk.

New York is "bike-friendly" only in the sense that drivers are not actively encouraged to use us as target practice, though the Police Department is currently doing its best to make up for that with a massive ticketing blitz.

Despite the addition of about 50 miles per year of bike lanes, many "friendly" thoroughfares remain hazardous. On Bay St. in Staten Island, the symbols on the pavement have been wearing off since the day they were installed. Now, instead of bicyclist figures, the bikes lane are designated with a foot here, a head there - an ill omen if there was ever one.

The lovely West St. bike path in Manhattan has been under construction as long as I've been riding on it. On nearly every other block, bicyclists are instructed to dismount and walk, or detour through the Battery Park marina.

During a stint as a graveyard shift proofreader, I was legally detouring through the poorly lit marina at midnight, only to realize that I was riding down a set of stairs at a terrifying 12-mile-an-hour clip. There was ice and snow on the ground, and I feared falling onto the pavement and discovering that the Bush-era consumer product office in charge of bicycle helmets had overlooked a design flaw or two. I slammed on my pedals and, luckily, managed to survive the ordeal.

Routinely, cars drive up behind me and honk so loudly I may well crash in front of them, their antipathy so great they neglect to realize that while I may be killed, their insurance rates are going to go through the roof. I've chosen to ride in highway rush-hour traffic rather than negotiate dog-walkers and kids on scooters.

Traffic laws are designed for cars, so the safest way to bike is often to disobey these hostile rules; I cross intersections after all the cars have cleared but before the light turns green, so that I am well away when taxis shoot out of the gate, snorting like bulls. I go the wrong way on a one-way street instead of dismounting and walking my bike on a sidewalk, which would invariably enrage pedestrians.

But maybe it is not because we're breaking the rules that we are so hated. Here in New York, traffic laws are treated by everyone as recommendations.

Some have suggested it's the hybrid nature of the bike: Neither pedestrian nor car, it shares the path of both, the laws of neither.

But whatever the bike is, it's here to stay. By giving us bike lanes - and regulating our use of them - New York can signal that we are legitimate commuters, just like those who walk and drive.

As for me, I'm not giving up biking anytime soon. I've blithely whisked by drivers sitting at lights, discomfited at the length of their commute, cursing yet another bottleneck. Chances are, in any city the bikers are going to be home faster than the drivers will. Then we'll drink up all the beer and get back to our plotting.